"Significantly, 45.4% of the exclusively homosexual participants reported having made major changes in their orientation.
On the other hand, 35.1% of the participants were unsuccessful in making significant changes."
OK, so the bottom line here is that reparative therapy is successful for a significant number of people, and is a failure for a much smaller - yet still significant - number of people.
Well, duh! Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs also have a significant number of both successes and failures. And drug-rehab programs have large numbers of each. So do convict-rehab programs. And let's not forget that chemotherapy and radiation therapy save the lives of large numbers of cancer patients, yet fail completely with a huge chunk - perhaps even a majority - of all cancer patients.
So do we hear calls for shutting down AA and drug-rehab and convict-rehab programs, and chemo- and radiation- therapy, based on the fact that they have significant failure rates? No? We don't? They why do we hear calls (from people on madg's side of the PC fence) for shutting down the ex-gay reparative therapy programs?
And madg (who, significantly, has not a thing to say in response to the well- documented scientific evidence presented in polycarp's rebuttals, other than to dismiss it all as "name-calling and propaganda") cites this quote in an earlier post of his ---
"... Since the 1980s the clinical literature contains many examples of gay men treated with psychoanalysis or dynamic psychotherapy [(IE: NARTH, et al) whose sexual orientation did not change during treatment, despite attempts to bring this about (Duberman 1991; McConaghy 1999)."
OK, so we see that Duberman and McConaghy have discovered "many examples of gay men treated ... [who] did not change during treatment ...". Well, like, so what? This claim of "many examples" of failure is certainly in keeping with the research done by the ex-gay therapists, who freely admit to a 35.1% failure rate. So this is not exactly a Startling Relevation from Duberman et al, now, is it?
And it's rather disingenuous - to say the least - for Duberman & Co. (or for someone who has perhaps lifted a quote from them out of context????) to merely note anecdotal information about the many failures and then say nothing about the much larger number of successes! Their statement is not much different than say, a statement like - "Since the 1920s the clinical literature contains many examples of alcoholics treated through AA programs who did not become ex-alcoholics". Or similar to say, a documentary entitled "American Military History 1775-2002" that spends 98% of its time on the Vietnam War.